“Thank you for your trust”, Vaino told Putin.
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Some Kremlin insiders believed that Ivanov then ruined his presidential chances with a premature celebration of what he apparently had seen as the already secured nomination, something which had put Putin on his guard.
Ivanov has been appointed as the new special presidential envoy on environmental management, ecology and transport. During the past year, he fired the head of transportation Vladimir Yakunin, the drug czar Viktor Ivanov and intelligence chief Yevgeni Mourov. Parliamentary elections loom in mid-September, at a time when the economy is under strain.
According to the Kremlin, Putin spoke to British Prime Minister Theresa May over the phone for the first time since she took office.
“I’m happy with how you handle tasks in your line of work”, Mr Putin said.
Britain has also been one of the most fervent supporters of Western sanctions against Moscow over Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis. When Mr Putin came to power, he named Mr Ivanov as one of the five people he trusted most.
President Vladimir Putin has demoted one of his closest allies in a rare and dramatic shake up of Russia’s top leadership.
When Putin was appointed Federal Security Service (FSB) chief, Ivanov became his deputy, later being appointed a member of Russia’s Security Council. A fluent English speaker, Mr Ivanov served as a go-between with the administration of George W. Bush, bonding with Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush’s National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State, over a shared passion for ballet.
“If until recently, the system acted in the interests of the bureaucracy, now, it does so ever more in the interests of the leader”, Nikolai Petrov, head of the Center for Political-Geographic Research, a Russian think tank, wrote recently in the newspaper Vedomosti.
Moscow-based analyst Alexei Makarkin said that Putin wants to avoid projecting the image of an ageing leader. Vaino is the grandson of a Soviet-era Communist Party boss of the Baltic republic of Estonia. Since 2002 he has occupied various positions in the presidential administration.
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Vaino had been deputy chief of staff since May 2012, when Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third term as president.
